Enough
by PepsiCola541
Summary: Annabeth's famous, but doesn't like fame. Percy likes his fame, but doesn't like the heartbreak that comes with it. Annabeth has never experienced heartbreak, but maybe Percy will be the one to fix that. Likewise, Annabeth may be the one to fix Percy's broken heart. When they're given a fixed relationship, maybe they'll both find their chances in the least likely of people. AU.


Title: Enough

Pairing: Percy x Annabeth

Words: (Chapter 1) 2,730+

Summary: Annabeth's famous, but doesn't like fame. Percy likes his fame, but doesn't like the heartbreak that comes with it. Annabeth has never experienced heartbreak, but maybe Percy will be the one to fix that. Likewise, Annabeth may be the one to fix Percy's broken heart. When they're given a fixed relationship, maybe they'll both find their chances in the least likely of people. AU.

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Chapter One

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"What do you mean?" I ask, astonished and a tad horrified. I'm on my perfectly white couch (free of holes and coffee stains that my old couch used to have, back when I was poor but still happy), but it's so uncomfortable that I keep shifting my leg from under my body and across my other thigh. Nothing seems to make it more content, and my frown deepens in distaste.

"You need another fling, Annabeth," Drew tells me with a sigh. Her perfect eyebrow arches upward, a silent threat saying _you don't want to disagree with me, sister. _She has such an overbearing personality- I would fire her if I would, but my dad is the head of my management, ironically. He'd just hire her right back, and Drew would put me through even more hell then she already is.

"Another fling?" I ask in a monotone. I knew this was coming. _Let's make you even more of a slut. The act continues. Well, Annabeth, if you don't want it to be an act, why don't you date them for _real?

_Because that's not me._

"Yes," she answers back in the same tone, glancing down at her clipboard and scribbling something down, as if I'm a patient who needs special medication. "I've already gotten it all smoothed out. You're going to date Percy Jackson-"

I raise an eyebrow. "From the band Vacation's End?"

She sighs with impatience, rolling her mascara-coated eyes to the ceiling in a perfect circle, as if she'd been practicing. I look away, disinterested with how this is going to end up. "Yes, Annabeth, from that band. Anyway, as I was saying, you're going to date him, but there's a catch- you're starring in a movie together."

"What?" my head jerks up to meet her gaze. "But I haven't gotten any lines. And we have to have auditions-"

"Shh." She stops me with a hand, five fingers splayed. "I've already gotten that figured out, too. I gave them your best audition tape, the one you used for _Live Better." _

I roll my eyes this time. _Live Better _was the worst movie ever written, and I hated acting in it. Despite all that, it was the third most grossing film in the U.S. at the time it premiered. That was the movie I had my "fling" with Luke Castellan.

"Great," I say sarcastically. I was actually hoping just to start writing some songs, release a new album. Songwriting came to me easier- acting wasn't my natural love. It made me nervous just like singing relaxed me. "So this Percy will be the lead?"

"No, Annabeth," she says, as if she's talking to a spoiled child in trouble. I lift up my chin. "You're both dual leads."

"Ah." I nod my head in assent. "What's the plot about?"

"Read for yourself," she says. She pulls out a large, blue binder. As she walks over to me, the corners of her mouth quirk up into an amused, mocking smile. "Since you love reading so much."

I hear the laughter in her voice and try not to glare. Instead, I send her a saccharine smile, taking the binder with a flourish. "Thanks, Drew."

She simply snorts, and I'm met with the thought of _how does she manage to snort prettily, too? _And again I wonder why I'm not _her _manager. She's way prettier than I am, with a pure complexion, perfect, white teeth, and even tan. Even though I know she gets up incredibly early and power-walks everywhere, her hair isn't the least bit frizzy and her makeup is flawless. I suddenly feel very self-conscious, closing my mouth with semi-crooked teeth (straight bottom teeth and front teeth, crooked ones to the sides). I pick at my nails.

She seems to notice the power she brings into the room and smiles as if she's won the award for Miss America. "Okay, so Percy Jackson should be arriving here in a while." She frowns a bit. I'm in the middle of wondering if they'd had a past together when in walks the devil himself.

"Percy," she says, drawing out the 'y'. With her back turned, I roll my eyes. When I look back, Percy Jackson is staring at me with a bemused look in his eyes, like _I know exactly how you feel right now. _The feeling of someone understanding me washes over me like a tidal wave, but it's gone as soon as it came.

"Hi, Drew," he says, smiling winningly at her. The kid's not a bad looker, I'll give him that, and he doesn't look like a total douche like most celebrities do. He shifts his hands, not knowing what to do with them, and he keeps changing their position- running them through his disheveled hair, stuffing them in his pockets. He has broad shoulders and a fair tan, with dark freckles dotting his nose. His teeth are only slightly crooked, but in a way that's charming. If Drew did have a thing for Jackson, I could see why.

His hair is fairly long and it contrasts with his eyes. They're pools of ocean, literally, and a song lyric comes to my mind suddenly: _Drowning in your eyes of ocean… _

Ooh. That's good. I'm trying to think of words that rhyme with 'ocean' when Drew interrupts my train of thought.

"Earth to Annabeth," she says, literally snapping her fingers in my face. I blink at the sudden noise, my head involuntarily going back an inch. Her perfume starts choking me, and the feeling of not being able to breathe reminds me of the cloud of cigarette smoke from the day before.

"Anyway," she says, her voice perky now that a boy's in the room, "Annabeth, meet Percy Jackson. Percy, meet Annabeth Chase."

His voice is soft and a tad cautious when he speaks, as if I'll slug him in the face if he says something wrong. "Hi, Annabeth." His voice cracks on the 'e' in my name, and I notice Drew cringe from his awkwardness.

"Hello, Jackson," I say easily, confident that I won't crack a syllable. I've never heard him sing before, actually, even though his band is pretty well known. I imagine him singing with cracks in his words, and I almost cringe like Drew.

"Okay," Drew says, trying to hurry everything along. Really, what's her problem? If Percy and I have to 'date', we have to know each other at least a little. At least his favorite color or something.

"Let's run over the rules, you guys," she says, motioning to the uncomfortable couches parallel to one another. I inwardly groan- rules are the worst. "Before your movie- which I'm not going to go over until next week, once you've both read up on your lines- we're going to run some duets. Annabeth will start singing in Vacation's End as a featured singer, but then she's going to become an all-time lead."

Percy literally jumps up from his seat. "What?" he says, incredulous, as if Christmas had been cancelled or something. Really, what's the big deal? I'll only be part of his precious band until we 'break up'- this isn't a permanent gig. "I don't get how you get to take charge in this, Drew-"

"It's not me," she says, her voice smooth as ice. Her brown eyes are flashing like they do when she's about to scream.

One thing most people don't get about Drew- she has a short fuse. When she was younger, she had terrible anger issues and even worse tantrums, especially when she didn't get what she wanted. Her problems were so awful that she had to take therapy to soothe her fury. Some of those exercises that she remembers from her therapy still surface from time to time, like that breathing thing Sharpay did in High School Musical right before a show.

She practices it right now, closing her eyes and breathing in and out slowly after her weird "bbllbb" sounds. "It's management's fault, not mine. If you want to argue, take it to management."

That shuts Percy up real quick. Just like me, there's someone he doesn't want to cross at management- maybe a parent, like me.

"Okay," he reluctantly agrees. He lowers his head like a dog that just got scolded by its owner. I feel almost bad for the kid, but he's still annoying me. What is the big deal, I wonder?

"Alright," Drew says, swallowing hard like she had a bad taste in her mouth. She's about to say something she doesn't want to say, I can tell. "I have to leave you both alone now so you can work out the kinks of your songwriting." She holds up a finger, wagging it at us. "And don't leave this house until you finish a song!" she adds, gathering her bag and clipboard slowly, as if she doesn't want to leave us alone.

"Okay, Drew," Percy says, his voice flat. She lingers still, and he seems to grow impatient. "We don't need a babysitter, alright?"

Wow, Jackson actually has some balls to talk back to Drew. I'm silently impressed. She purses her lips, scoffing as she walks out the door and slams it behind her.

Yeah, I'm not sure her anger treatment did all that much.

Percy rolls his eyes at me, still thinking of Drew's rudeness. "She's always like that," I remark, trying to break the silence and get this _the heck over with. _

"Yeah," he says. His single word hangs in the thick silence that follows, and he's nodding slowly to himself awkwardly.

It almost makes me miss Drew.

"Okay," I say, leaning down to grab a pad of pen and paper from the coffee table. "So, what're we going to write about?"

He thinks for a second, or pretends to think. I can't tell what he's thinking. Guys are usually easy to read, but I can't read Jackson. It's a strange situation.

"Well, if we're going to be 'dating', or 'interested in one another'," he says, using finger quotes with heavy sarcasm, "we should probably write small hints about each other in the song. You know. You can sing a part about, say, my eyes-" I think about the lyric that came to mind a while back once he says that- "and I'll write about you. Got it?"

"Yeah," I say. "So, are we just writing our own parts?"

He nods slowly. "Uh, yeah, sounds easiest." The slacker. Of course he'd go the easy way. His forever-changing attitude started to annoy me- he went from hard-working to caring to mad to awkward to vice versa and back again. Who exactly was this guy?

I guess I was staring at him for a while, because I suddenly realized I knew the color of his eyes very well and that they _were _easy to drown in. Whoops. He shifts his head downward, laughing to himself, like me zoning out on him was an insider with himself.

"Okay," he adds, trying to forget the moment. Ooh, nice lyric incorporation: _Forget the moment… that's set in stone, _I add inwardly, scribbling it down on my pad of paper. Nice job, Chase, not bad at all.

We sit there, just working on the song, tapping out a beat with our pens. It seems Percy's good with a beat- I wonder if he plays drums?- and he's suddenly tapping his pen and his foot and whisper-singing his lyrics.

"Here," I say, biting the end of my pen. "This is what I've got so far."

He leans over my written words, and I notice his raven hair falling in his eyes as he casts his gaze on my paper. "Let me drown in your eyes of ocean," he reads after a few seconds of looking at the words. I suddenly wonder if he has a reading disorder. Because of my dyslexia, I have to read over a sentence a few hundred times before I decipher the jumbled letters. It seems he does the same thing. He continues, "I don't know how long I'll stay. Hey, baby, what's all the commotion? Just give me a moment, then I'll away…"

When he reads, his voice gets softer and more thoughtful, smoother and richer. When you have time to figure out the words, it's easier to speak. I understand that completely, actually, and it makes me feel a certain kinship to the guy. Songs can do that to people.

I motion to his paper, and he hands it to me with an easy movement. I start reading. "Today's the day we're moving on. We're royals being overthrown; here today, tomorrow we're gone. Here, together, we're completely alone…" I look at him, and his eyes are still searching his written scrawl as if trying to read over the meaning there.

"Percy," I say, "we're supposed to be writing a song about us being interested in one another, not letting go of our relationship." I feel bad saying this; I actually love the lyrics he's written.

To my surprise, he laughs, loud and clear with a bitter ring. "Sorry, Annabeth," he says, but he doesn't sound sorry at all. "I… I just got out of one of these fixed relationships." He looks down at his lap, fidgeting with his hands. "With Rachel Dare- do you know her?"

I do, actually, but I wish I didn't. "No, not personally," I lie smoothly. "But I know of her."

He laughs again, the same bitter sound, and I wonder if he's going to break down right here in my living room. I surely hope not. "Well, long story short, it wasn't exactly… fake on my part." He scoffs at a random spot on the wall, and then jerks his eyes back to mine. "I loved her," he blurts suddenly. And then repeats it: "I loved her." The second time he says it, his voice is so broken that I'm sure he's going to cry, but then he fixes his eyes on his lyrics before scratching them out with force, trying to forget his confession to a stranger. _Forget the moment that's set in stone. _

"You're right," he agrees, although it doesn't feel like he's talking to me. "You're right." Then he starts tapping his pen on his lip, thinking of other words to put on paper, blinking repeatedly.

I just stare at him. He's so hard to figure out.

Finally, he simply tears the yellow page from the pad and throws it at the wall, fed up with his thoughts. Then he starts scrawling on the next page, taking deep breaths that remind me of Drew as he does so.

I let him work for a while before I ask, tentatively, "Have you finished a line?"

"Yeah," he says, pushing the pad over on my lap. I start to read. "The space between us, it's enough to ruin what we've built. Such a new idea, forgetting what we used to remember. We're a skeleton house, walking on stilts; we're January, moving on from December." I look at him, and realize he's watching the slow movements of my eyes just as I did his.

One side of his mouth curves up the slightest bit as he says, "What do you think?"

And I say, "It's perfect."

And that's how it all begins.


End file.
